Schuth, William OH1419
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Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center Transcript of an Oral History Interview with WILLIAM SCHUTH Tactical Data Network Administrator, Marines, Operation Iraqi Freedom 2008 OH 1419 OH 1419 Schuth, William. Oral History Interview, 2008. Approximate length: 55 minutes Contact WVM Research Center for access to original recording. Abstract: In this oral history interview, William Schuth, a University of Wisconsin alumni, discusses his Operation Iraqi Freedom service as part of Echo Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines from February 26th, 2004 to September 26th, 2004, where he served in a counter-battery fire artillery unit, a provisional rifle company, and an international border sercuity force near the Al-Anbar Governorate, including Al-Asad Airbase, Camp MEK, Haditha, FOB Trebil, and FOB Waleed. Schuth discusses the impact of deploying on short notice from the Marine Corps and his limited special training before shipping to Iraq. He comments on the working relationship the Marines in his company had with the Iraqis, and explains the challenges of adjusting to the desert climate. Schuth reflects on the support he received from home and comments on the anti-war criticism the war was receiving during his deployment. Finally, he discusses the unpreparedness of the Marines for the war, and provides his thoughts on the war as a whole. Biographical Sketch: Schuth served with Echo Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom from February 26th, 2004 to September 26th, 2004. While in theater, he worked in a counter-battery fire artillery unit, a provisional rifle company, and an international border security force near the Al-Anbar Governorate, including Al-Asad Airbase, Camp MEK, the Haditha Dam, FOB Trebil, and FOB Waleed. Schuth left the Marines in 2007 to continue his education at the University of Wisconsin in American civil-military relations. Archivist’s Note: Transcriptions are a reflection of the original oral history recording. Due to human and machine fallibility transcripts often contain small errors. Transcripts may not have been transcribed from the original recording medium. It is strongly suggested that researchers engage with the oral history recording as well as the transcript. Timestamps reflect the entire length of the interview, which was filmed in two parts. Interviewed by Bill Brewster, 2008. Transcribed by Helen Gibb, 2016. Reviewed by Matthew Scharpf, 2017. Abstract written by Matthew Scharpf, 2017. ii Interview Transcript: [Beginning of Interview] [PART I] BREWSTER: Let's start out with your name, and your rank, and your reason for joining the military. SCHUTH: My name is William Schuth. When I exited my active duty service I was a corporal in the United States Marine Corps. And I joined the service for a variety of reasons but it was right in that year after 9/11 and it seemed like the right thing to do. BREWSTER: You were motivated by 9/11 then? SCHUTH: Partially. I was also at a stage in my life where joining the military seemed to be a good idea as far as opening up other opportunities to me. BREWSTER: How old were you? SCHUTH: I was twenty—yeah, going on twenty. It was about a month before I turned twenty. BREWSTER: What's your current status? SCHUTH: I'm a student at the University of Wisconsin. And I'm still on inactive reserve duty. BREWSTER: How long were you active? SCHUTH: I was active from December 2, 2002 to December 1, 2006—stationed primarily out of Camp Pendleton. BREWSTER: And what was your MOS [Military Occupation Specialty]? SCHUTH: O656, which is a tactical data network administrator. BREWSTER: So you worked primarily— SCHUTH: Primarily in communications. I was with 11th Marines, which is an artillery unit. BREWSTER: When was it that you deployed to Iraq? SCHUTH: I deployed to Iraq in late February of 2004 and I was there until late September of the same year. 1 BREWSTER: What were the circumstances of the deployment? SCHUTH: It was rather sudden. I was with the Headquarters battery of 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines. Our comm chief told a bunch of us that we were getting augmented to Echo battery, which is one of the active firing batteries, and that they were going to be making a deployment to Iraq. I was one of those individuals. So we made the transition over to Echo and we had about two weeks before we deployed—I think the date was February twenty-sixth. We left the southern California area and flew over via Maine, and then via Frankfurt, and we landed in Kuwait. And we were in Kuwait for some time before we went up because we had to unload our gear off of ships and stuff like that. Or have it unloaded and trucked up to us and calibrated. BREWSTER: For two weeks? SCHUTH: Yeah, probably be about two weeks in Kuwait. I'm told that the base is no longer there—it was called Camp New York. It's in the Udairi [Training] range. That's where we were test firing our howitzers before we drove up north. BREWSTER: So there really wasn't much preparation for your deployment then? SCHUTH: Not really, no. It was quite sudden. About a few days before we actually deployed—we had already gone to BZO [Battle Sight Zero] our rifles, we had M-16 A2s, and all of a sudden they said, Oh we've got a bunch of M-16 A4s in. And we actually spent a night—probably until like midnight—unpacking them from cosmoline and cleaning them, and everything. Then the next day we went out at like four o'clock in the morning and BZO'd those rifles again. I mean, it was extremely short timeline, for spinning up, before we left. BREWSTER: Is part of your regular training—prior to deployment—was there some component that would be directed toward desert warfare? SCHUTH: No, not toward desert warfare. I hadn't been with the unit long enough to go up to Twentynine Palms. Generally every year they go on combined arms exercise up to Twentynine Palms and that's where you get the majority of your desert training. I had done my comm school training there—that's where the Marines have their MOS academy for the communications field—but I hadn't been up there as part of an active unit or anything like that. What's ironic though is that we had been involved in stability and security operations—they call them SASO—and that was going on at March Air Force Base [March Air Reserve Base] in like their old, sort of like, base housing area. It was supposedly about to be condemned and so we were one of the units that was training other infantry units to go over and basically how to operate in an urban terrain environment with people—each of us were assigned roles and we were supposed to act like what our concept of Iraqis were, basically. [00:04:41] So I was involved in that on the training side of it, and came down on a seventy- two—seventy-two hours off from that training exercise and that's when I found out that I was going over. Someone came and knocked on my door on like a Friday or a Saturday morning, you know, that I had off and said, "You have to go report to the first sergeant because you're getting deployed." I didn't believe it at first. It was a friend of mine who was on duty in the barracks that came and got me and I thought he was pulling my leg. I yelled at him for it and he said, "No, I'm serious. You have to go see the first sergeant. So shave and get changed, and go." And that was a pretty rude awakening that morning. BREWSTER: So you got assigned to Echo battery? SCHUTH: From Headquarters, yes. BREWSTER: From Headquarters. And so did they have the same short notice for deployment or were they— SCHUTH: We knew that something was going on, that one of the firing batteries in the battalion was going to go. And the rationale given by our commanding officer at the time—his name was Colonel Frasier—said that he—I remember the words he said, "I went out on a run and it came to me. Echo battery should be the one that goes." He decided it while he was PT'ing one day, apparently. [Laughs] I don't know if the officers called him but everyone else called him—his first name was Mike and a lot of people called him Money Mike. That was his nickname in the battalion. He was a really, really good CO that pretty much everyone expected, but for him to say, "I decided this when I was on a PT run." A lot of guys didn't take that too well. BREWSTER: So there was some negative reaction because of the short notice. SCHUTH: Yeah, I think that was primarily—at this point, this was probably what, less than a year after the invasion still so there wasn't a whole lot of hesitance or anything like that in terms of what the mission was going to be but in terms of the short notice, guys were definitely feeling that deadline. Especially in terms of telling your family like all of a sudden this is out of the blue, "I'm going." Everyone expects to go at some point but for it to be that short of a notice, you know, doesn't really give you time to go see your family or anything like that if you live out of state, or if you're not from California.